Even in belief you have but one (that, not in reality), and this one enemy is yourself—your erroneous belief that you have enemies; that evil is real; that aught but good exists in Science. Soon or late, your enemy will wake from his delusion to suffer for his evil intent; to find that, though thwarted, its punishment is tenfold.
Love is the fulfilling of the law: it is grace, mercy, and justice. I used to think it sufficiently just to abide by our State statutes; that if a man should aim a ball at my heart, and I by firing first could kill him and save my own life, that this was right. I thought, also, that if I taught indigent students gratuitously, afterwards assisting them pecuniarily, and did not cease teaching the wayward ones at close of the class term, but followed them with precept upon precept; that if my instructions had healed them and shown them the sure way of salvation—I had done my whole duty to students.
Love metes not out human justice, but divine mercy. If one's life were attacked, and one could save it only in accordance with common law, by taking another's, would one sooner give up his own? We must love our enemies in all the manifestations wherein and whereby we love our friends; must even try not to expose their faults, but to do them good whenever opportunity occurs. To mete out human justice to those who persecute and despitefully use one, is not leaving all retribution to God and returning blessing for cursing. If special opportunity for doing good to one's enemies occur not, one can include them in his general effort to benefit the race. Because I can do much general good to such as hate me, I do it with earnest, special care—since they permit me no other way, though with tears have I striven for it. When smitten on one cheek, I have turned the other: I have but two to present.
I would enjoy taking by the hand all who love me not, and saying to them, “I love you, and would not knowingly harm you.” Because I thus feel, I say to others: Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, throughout time and beyond the grave. If you have been badly wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense this wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, him who has striven to injure you. Never return evil for evil; and, above all, do not fancy that you have been wronged when you have not been.
The present is ours; the future, big with events. Every man and woman should be to-day a law to himself, herself—a law of loyalty to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The means for sinning unseen and unpunished have so increased that, unless one be watchful and steadfast in Love, one's temptations to sin are increased a hundredfold. Mortal mind at this period mutely works in the interest of both good and evil in a manner least understood; hence the need of watching, and the danger of yielding to temptation from causes that at former periods in human history were not existent. The action and effects of this so-called human mind in its silent arguments, are yet to be uncovered and summarily dealt with by divine justice.
In Christian Science, the law of Love rejoices the heart; and Love is Life and Truth. Whatever manifests aught else in its effects upon mankind, demonstrably is not Love. We should measure our love for God by our love for man; and our sense of Science will be measured by our obedience to God—fulfilling the law of Love, doing good to all; imparting, so far as we reflect them, Truth, Life, and Love to all within the radius of our atmosphere of thought.
The only justice of which I feel at present capable, is mercy and charity toward every one—just so far as one and all permit me to exercise these sentiments toward them—taking special care to mind my own business.
The falsehood, ingratitude, misjudgment, and sharp return of evil for good yea, the real wrongs (if wrong can be real) which I have long endured at the hands of others have most happily wrought out for me the law of loving mine enemies. This law I now urge upon the solemn consideration of all Christian Scientists. Jesus said, “If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.”
Christian Theism
Scholastic theology elaborates the proposition that evil is a factor of good, and that to believe in the reality of evil is essential to a rounded sense of the existence of good.
This frail hypothesis is founded upon the basis of material and mortal evidence—only upon what the shifting mortal senses confirm and frail human reason accepts. The Science of Soul reverses this proposition, overturns the testimony of the five erring senses, and reveals in clearer divinity the existence of good only; that is, of God and His idea.
This postulate of divine Science only needs to be conceded, to afford opportunity for proof of its correctness and the clearer discernment of good.
Seek the Anglo-Saxon term for God, and you will find it to be good; then define good as God, and you will find that good is omnipotence, has all power; it fills all space, being omnipresent; hence, there is neither place nor power left for evil. Divest your thought, then, of the mortal and material view which contradicts the everpresence and all-power of good; take in only the immortal facts which include these, and where will you see or feel evil, or find its existence necessary either to the origin or ultimate of good?
It is urged that, from his original state of perfection, man has fallen into the imperfection that requires evil through which to develop good. Were we to admit this vague proposition, the Science of man could never be learned; for in order to learn Science, we begin with the correct statement, with harmony and its Principle; and if man has lost his Principle and its harmony, from evidences before him he is incapable of knowing the facts of existence and its concomitants: therefore to him evil is as real and eternal as good, God! This awful deception is evil's umpire and empire, that good, God, understood, forcibly destroys.
What appears to mortals from their standpoint to be the necessity for evil, is proven by the law of opposites to be without necessity. Good is the primitive Principle of man; and evil, good's opposite, has no Principle, and is not, and cannot be, the derivative of good. Thus evil is neither a primitive nor a derivative, but is suppositional; in other words, a lie that is incapable of proof—therefore, wholly problematical.
The Science of Truth annihilates error, deprives evil of all power, and thereby destroys all error, sin, sickness, disease, and death. But the sinner is not sheltered from suffering from sin: he makes a great reality of evil, identifies himself with it, fancies he finds pleasure in it, and will reap what he sows; hence the sinner must endure the effects of his delusion until he awakes from it.
The New Birth
St. Paul speaks of the new birth as “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” The great Nazarene Prophet said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” Nothing aside from the spiritualization—yea, the highest Christianization—of thought and desire, can give the true perception of God and divine Science, that results in health, happiness, and holiness.
The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins with moments, and goes on with years; moments of surrender to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration, heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.
Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the new birth: eternity does this; for progress is the law of infinity. Only through the sore travail of mortal mind shall soul as sense be satisfied, and man awake in His likeness. What a faith-lighted thought is this! that mortals can lay off the “old man,” until man is found to be the image of the infinite good that we name God, and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears.
In mortal and material man, goodness seems in embryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is developed into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. These nourish the hungry hope, satisfy more the cravings for immortality, and so comfort, cheer, and bless one, that he saith: In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down to earth.
But, as one grows into the manhood or womanhood of Christianity, one finds so much lacking, and so very much requisite to become wholly Christlike, that one saith: The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is indeed God; and this